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Even in a pro-business setting like the Detroit Athletic Club, a Utopian vision to remake Belle Isle as an independent commonwealth ran into healthy skepticism today.

Sandy Baruah, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber, told developer Rodney Lockwood and his partners that they hadn’t done enough to explain how their idea for a wealthy, virtually tax-free enclave on Belle Isle would benefit Detroit itself.
“Having rich neighbors doesn’t make you rich,” he said, pointing to the example of upscale Grosse Pointe right next to Detroit, one of the poorest cities in the nation.

George Jackson, president and CEO of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., dismissed the Lockwood vision as “trickle-down” economics that held few benefits for the city itself.

And Gary Brown, a member of Detroit’s City Council, told the Lockwood partners that visionary plans like theirs only work if you tackle the problems of the city first, and that their plan provided no fix for the city’s ills.

“It will not work. You’ve got to fix the problems of the city,” Brown said.

But the Commonwealth of Belle Isle idea found several supporters, too, among the invited guests at the DAC. John Rakolta, chairman and CEO of the Walbridge construction firm based in Detroit, said the Lockwood vision could produce $20 billion in new investment and create 200,000 jobs in the city in 10 years, although he admitted the numbers were just guesses on his part.

“This is what it means to be competitive,” Rakolta said. Detroit, he said, “would either grow fast like this or we’ll have to go through the abyss – bankruptcy.”

About 50 invited guests, including several reporters, attended the luncheon at the DAC to hear Lockwood and his partners – Hal Sperlich, former president of Chrysler, and Larry Mongo, owner of the popular Café d’Mongo’s Speakeasy in Detroit – lay out their vision for the island.

That vision is less a detailed plan than a concept contained in a fictional book by Lockwood set years in the future, after the commonwealth has transformed both the island and the city.

That vision leans heavily on the free-market premises found in the work of the late author Ayn Rand. A low-tax, low-regulation commonwealth on Belle Isle would be free of crime, inflation, and public corruption, the partners said. There would be no need for welfare or other government entitlement programs because “you don’t need those in a self-reliant society,” Sperlich said.

Moreover, the sort of entrepreneurial people who would live and work there – what Sperlich called “freedom advocates” -- would foster billions of dollars in spin-off investment for Detroit, creating an enclave that was the envy of the world.

“Detroit, Michigan, would be transformed from the flyover state to the fly-from state,” Lockwood said.

“Belle Isle would be the most competitive nation in the world – a magnet for capital,” Sperlich added. “C’mon patriots… if not this, what? Here’s a crazy-ass idea from Mr. Lockwood that I think would work.”

The Lockwood vision calls for the commonwealth to buy Belle Isle from the City of Detroit for $1 billion – money to come from investors who buy into the vision of a self-governing enclave – and residents would buy the right to live there for $300,000 each, although room would be set aside for some low-income residents, too.

With the City of Detroit facing a possibly municipal bankruptcy this year, Sperlich said a bankruptcy judge may decide to sell Belle Isle to satisfy claims against the city. “If a bankruptcy does occur, I would think a non-strategic asset like Belle Isle would be in play,” he said. “Any judge who went through high school would have to take a look at it.”

There may have been a few problems with the symbolism of the event – held at the exact time of President Barack Obama’s inauguration and on the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lockwood explained at the outset that Monday was the only day on which the event could be scheduled. But Jackson later suggested that if a Republican had been inaugurated as president Monday instead of the Democratic Obama, the event planners would have found a different day for the presentation.